December 8, 2013 A Scout Is Brave Campaign - Day 7 In view of The Vancouver Sun article in the December 7 edition, I feel

compelled to bring this poignant and insightful analysis to the attention of Rex Tillerson and his staff in the Ofce of the Chairman. Following is my email which was sent at 2:41pm today: Dear Mr. Tillerson, Further to my email of December 4, in addition to the recent technical paper published by Dr. James E. Hansen! et al, an article appearing in the December 7 issue of The Vancouver Sun offers another perspective on the urgency to begin reducing CO2 emissions right away. The choices we make with regard to how to address guarding the economy and protecting future generations from devastating effects of climate change present us with a conundrum ...! Essentially this: How can we have our cake and eat it too? In other words: Do we value life on earth, or "discounted present value" prots? Your staff's responses to my request to meet you to discuss the contents of my book "A Scout Is Brave" tells me that you have insulated yourself from constructive input, an act of "intentional blindness" that puts future generations of humanity in mortal jeopardy. Attached is the! entire article! (http:/ /bit.ly/vancouver-sun-7-december), but for your convenience, the central and most poignant discussion is the following nine short paragraphs (my emphasis added): There are two ways to keep emissions in check in the short term, until new technology is ready - slow down expansion plans temporarily, and promote the use of clean, renewable energy, says![Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental thinktank and research group].! "The oilsands can continue to grow but much more slowly under carbon constraints, not the uncontrolled growth we have now," he says.

December 8, 2013

[Former oil executive Eric] Newell is dead set against decelerating expansion because that would send a negative signal to investors, who might go elsewhere. "If we slow it down, no one will notice the GHG loss, but they will notice the loss of energy," he says. Dyer argues Newell's CCEMC just doesn't have the tools to do its job. At $15 a tonne, the price of carbon is far too low to give oil companies a nancial incentive to cut emissions. A study by the Pembina Institute shows fewer than half the companies reduce emissions; mostly, they pay into the fund because it's cheaper. The price should be raised gradually to $100 or higher, says Dyer, noting the cost to build carbon capture into a project is around $200 a tonne. Dyer also says Alberta's reduction targets are weak compared with international targets. To avoid the worst of global warming, carbon emissions have to be reduced by 80 per cent by mid-century, he says, citing the longestablished Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Please have your staff read the entire article and present you with their assessment. To encourage you to acknowledge and respond constructively -- hopefully an invitation to meet for coffee -- I will continue to stand at the entrance to your ExxonMobil facility on Las Colinas Blvd. in hopes that you and your staff will see my placards and understand that this is an issue of the utmost concern to me. Anxious to meet with you to discuss my book "A Scout Is Brave". Sincerely yours, Doug Grandt 510-432-1452

Bitumen negates climate change efforts

Alberta's galloping growth is outpacing Canada's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
BY SHEILA PRATT, POSTMEDIA NEWS DECEMBER 7, 2013

. Photograph by: Larry Wong, Postmedia News Files, Postmedia News

It's Alberta's biggest environmental battle - to reduce rising greenhouse gases from the oilsands - and former oil executive Eric Newell is running a global search for some silver bullets. Newell knows it's a race against time. As the U.S. and other industrialized countries are reducing carbon emissions to combat global warming, Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions just keep rising. Those emissions are a major reason why Canada won't meet its international target for 2020, a 17-percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels. They are also negating the effect of reductions in

other provinces that have moved away from coal-fired electricity. Federal figures released in October show Canada's emissions are again on the rise, after six years of decline. By the end of the decade, they will be 20-per-cent higher than the climate-change targets set at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit - in essence, little reduction from 2005. Newell, chairman of Alberta's Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation, says the situation is growing urgent. As a former CEO and chairman at oilsands giant Syncrude, he also knows what's at stake if Alberta's efforts fail. "If we want to expand oilsands production as planned - and get all those economic benefits for Canada and Alberta - we have to reduce emissions absolutely, not just per barrel," he says. "That's the challenge." It's a tall order and Newell takes the long view. By 2050, Alberta must cut 200 megatonnes from the 400 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that will accompany planned expansion of the oilsands in decades ahead. Critics say the province isn't even on track to meet its interim target of a 50-megatonne reduction by 2020; it may achieve one-third of that goal. Oilsands GHG emissions were 48 megatonnes in 2010, but are set to more than double to 104 by 2020. So Newell and the CCEMC are searching for silver bullets or, as he calls it, "transformative technology." "We are looking for gamechangers, and they do come along." New technology gambles There's plenty of money to put into the job. Set up in 2009, the CCEMC runs Alberta's technology fund fed by a $15-a-tonne levy on excess carbon emissions. About $398 million has been paid to the fund, with more than $217 million invested in 52 cleanenergy projects, says Alberta Environment. In February, Newell's search for new technology went global. He got more than 340 submissions from 130 countries when CCEMC made its first "grand challenge" - worth $35 million for the winning project - to find new ways of turning carbon emissions into useful material, such as carbon-fibre pens. Three months later, Newell put $50 million on the table in another challenge, this time focusing on transformative technology to clean up greenhouse gases from oilsands extraction and production. In industry circles, a lot of hopes are riding on a new $35-million project using electromagnetic heat, like a big underground microwave, to melt the bitumen along with solvent to separate sand and oil for underground extraction.

The project - a co-operative effort of Suncor, Nexen and technology owner U.S.-based Harris Co. could slash greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by reducing the need to burn natural gas to create the steam that's now injected underground to melt the bitumen, says the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the industry lobby group. A pilot project is ready to proceed at Suncor's site, but commercial use is a long way off. That's the trouble with gambling on the tantalizing prospect of new technology to cut emissions, says Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank and research group. Carbon capture Such technology is usually years away and might not happen at all - as is the case, so far, with the province's big hopes for carbon capture and storage. Alberta set aside $2 billion for four projects to store carbon emissions underground. In its plan, the province is counting on carbon capture projects to bury 139 megatonnes of the 200-megatonne target. But this year, two major projects were cancelled, including one at TransAlta's Keephills coal-fired power plant west of Edmonton, partly because neither was economically viable. That's a major setback, says Dyer. So far, Alberta has only achieved an annual reduction of five megatonnes and it is only expected to hit a 14-megatonne reduction in 2020 - less than one-third of its target, according to Alberta Environment. "The ball is in the government's court to deliver on that promise," says Dyer. The Shell Quest project to bury emissions from its Scotford oil upgrader in Strathcona County is slated to be operating in 2015. While it will cut emissions there by one-third, that's still only one megatonne a year. The province put $745 million into the Quest project, which also got $120 million in federal funding. Production rises In the last decade, oilsands companies successfully reduced what's known as carbon intensity of the bitumen - emissions per barrel - by about 26 per cent. In 2007, Alberta became the only province to impose a carbon levy on large emitters, giving them further incentives to reduce greenhouse gases. Under the levy, companies had to reduce per-barrel emissions by 12 per cent from a 2005 baseline or pay $15 a tonne for emissions above that level into the CCEMC technology fund. But overall emissions keep rising because production has gone up dramatically and will continue with more open mines and underground projects already approved. There are two ways to keep emissions in check in the short term, until new technology is ready - slow

down expansion plans temporarily, and promote the use of clean, renewable energy, says Dyer. "The oilsands can continue to grow but much more slowly under carbon constraints, not the uncontrolled growth we have now," he says. Newell is dead set against decelerating expansion because that would send a negative signal to investors, who might go elsewhere. "If we slow it down, no one will notice the GHG loss, but they will notice the loss of energy," he says. Dyer argues Newell's CCEMC just doesn't have the tools to do its job. At $15 a tonne, the price of carbon is far too low to give oil companies a financial incentive to cut emissions. A study by the Pembina Institute shows fewer than half the companies reduce emissions; mostly, they pay into the fund because it's cheaper. The price should be raised gradually to $100 or higher, says Dyer, noting the cost to build carbon capture into a project is around $200 a tonne. Dyer also says Alberta's reduction targets are weak compared with international targets. To avoid the worst of global warming, carbon emissions have to be reduced by 80 per cent by midcentury, he says, citing the long-established Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In-situ emissions Meanwhile, there's a new red flag in the federal government's 2012 report on greenhouse gas emission trends. "Specifically, emissions from oilsands mining are projected to double while emissions from in situ production are expected to increase more than five times from 10 megatonnes in 2005 to 55 megatonnes in 2020," says the federal report. In situ or underground production will eventually be used in 80 per cent of the oilsands. That's creating a potential problem, says Greenpeace researcher Keith Stewart. It's difficult to put carbon capture and storage technologies in place on in situ operations, which include deep wells and pipelines that stretch many kilometres through the boreal forest, he says. Alberta's rising oilsands emissions are already offsetting reductions achieved in other parts of Canada's economy, Stewart notes. For instance, the country's biggest single drop in emissions, from Ontario's decision to phase out coalfired electricity, was negated by the increase in oilsands emissions. What about coal?

Newell gets irked by the fingers pointing constantly at the oilsands when the coal industry in Alberta is also responsible for major emissions. Yet there's not much fuss about coal, which has another 50 years to phase out its plants under federal rules. Syncrude - the largest oilsands producer, with its mine and upgrader on-site - pumped out 12.9 million tonnes of GHG emissions, while two coal-fired plants - TransAlta's Keephills and Capital Power's Genesee - produced 11.5 million tonnes and 9.4 million tonnes respectively, according to 2011 figures. Looking at coal on a global scale is one place where Greenpeace's Stewart and Newell might find themselves on the same page. In a recent report, Greenpeace documented the global sites with the fastest growing GHG emissions. Alberta's oilsands are fifth on the list, while at the top are expanding coal-fired plants in Australia and China. By 2020, the Australian plants are expected to produce another 720 megatonnes and those in China, another 1,400 megatonnes. While Stewart agrees "coal is the biggest threat globally," that doesn't let Canada or Alberta off the hook, he says. The oilsands is one industrial site and it has emissions equal to a small country such as Portugal. "It is one of the largest pools of carbon in the world, so it is a globally significant source." Attitudes changing In the 1990s, the oil industry fought the need to reduce greenhouse gases, resisted a carbon levy and supported Alberta's battle to derail the defunct Kyoto accord in 2001. But times have changed, says CAPP, whose website notes: "Canadians expect the oil and gas industry to do its part to fight climate change." "As an industry we account for 23 per cent of Canada's emissions and 0.5 per cent of global emissions. It's a big number and industry understands it must improve its performance." There are some hints the province is now reviewing its climate policy. The $15-a-tonne levy is up for review in 2014, and behind-the-scenes discussions about increasing it are underway. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has written U.S. President Barack Obama to call for discussion of a joint GHG strategy in his effort to get TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline approved. So far, there's been no response from Washington. Newell says he's aware that the industry's social licence to exploit the resource partly depends on making sure Alberta and the oilsands are ready for a low-carbon future. "We're not in a PR campaign, we will be judged by our actions, so we'd better get on with it," he says.

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